Why is it that Modernism, despite Roger Fry’s admiration for the material, relegated fired clay works to the area of craft? And why is craft a bad word in contemporary art? Even today, after many important modern and contemporary artists tried their hand at it, fired clay still remains for so many others a material not worthy of being used in contemporary sculpture.

This contempt is shown even in the lexicon which differentiates clay-based sculpture from the rest: the term of potter applies to those that make both pots, read functional and decorative objects, but also non-functional sculpture.

Or is ceramic a medium that is just so difficult to master that it mandates a categorization of its own? A reconsideration of the clay-based material in contemporary sculpture is necessary.

Fire It Up explores the work of ten Swiss artists from Romandie and Zurich who also use fired clay as their material of choice, and proposes that craft, once liberated from function, should be once again embraced as a necessary element in art-making.